(A worship new, I sing You captains, voyagers, explorers, yours! You engineers! you architects, machinists, your! You, not for trade or transportation only, 40 But in God's name, and for thy sake, O soul.) Passage to India! Lo, soul, for thee, of tableaus twain, I see, in one, the Suez canal initiated, open'd, I see the procession of steamships, the Empress Eugenie's leading the van I mark, from on deck, the strange landscape, the pure sky, the level sand in the distance I pass swiftly the picturesque groups, the workmen gather'd, The gigantic dredging machines. Passage to India! 30 Lo, soul! seest thou not God's purpose from the first? The earth to be spann'd, connected by net-work, The people to become brothers and sisters, The races, neighbors, to marry and be given in marriage, The oceans to be cross'd, the distant brought near, The lands to be welded together. Not you alone, proud truths of the world! Nor you alone, ye facts of modern science! But myths and fables of eld-Asia's, Africa's fables! 20 The far-darting beams of the spirit!-the unloos'd dreams! The deep diving bibles and legends The daring plots of the poets-the elder religions -O you temples fairer than lilies, pour'd over by the rising sun! O you fables, spurning the known, eluding the hold of the known, mounting to heaven! You lofty and dazzling towers, pinnacled, red as roses, burnish'd with gold! Towers of fables immortal, fashion'd from mortal dreams! You too I welcome, and fully, the same as the rest You too with joy I sing. SINGING my days, Singing the great achievements of the present, Singing the strong, light works of engineers, Our modern wonders, (the antique ponderous Seven outvied,) In the Old World, the east, the Suez canal, The New by its mighty railroad spann'd, The seas inlaid with eloquent, gentle wires, I sound, to commence, the cry, with thee, O soul, The Past! the Past! the Past! The Past! the dark, unfathom'd retrospect! 10 The teeming gulf! the sleepers and the shadows! The past! the infinite greatness of the past! For what is the present, after all, but a growth out of the past? (As a projectile, form'd, impell'd, passing a certain line, still keeps on, So the present, utterly form'd, impell'd by the past.) Passage, O soul, to India! Eclaircise the myths Asiatic-the primitive fables.

Sail forth and conquer my captain